I unhappily report that I am right about obesity and diet (Very long)

[Stoid]

@StarvingButStrong

Stoid – I wish you the very best. Happy eating (not toooooo much!), little hunger, and an amount of weight loss that will satisfy you and let you carry on until you reach your goal.

And I really do suggest you step away from this thread. I doubt anything people are saying about diet is new and vital info for you. Maybe even ask for the thread to be closed.

Then start a new thread next month with, I truly hope, good news to crow about.

Good luck!

Thank you Starving!

But on that "toooo " much issue…the thread is pretty deep so I think it’s been long forgotten, but the original point was that even eating all the carbs in the world, I long ago stopped eating unreasonable amounts of food, and still I managed to stay morbidly obese.

This thread started as a response to so many OTHER threads about obesity and fat people in general that would turn into debates about whether it was ok to be shitty to fat people in one way or another because, after all, we ask for it, since our problem is that we’re gluttonous sloths who stuff ourselves and lie around watching TV.

In those threads and in other conversations everywhere, fat people try to say, hey, I really don’t eat as much as you think… and the response is always: “Yeah, keep kidding yourself” or “Liar” or “deluded” or whatever, because, as everyone knows, it’s calories in, calories out, and so you MUST be stuffing your face to weigh 300 pounds!

So, this thread was opened to say: guess what, turns out I’m really not bullshitting myself. I’ve counted the calories, and I’m not losing a thing eating 1400 calories per day.

So, aside from the bigger conversation of how many calories I would have to eat in order to actually lose weight, and whether carbs vs. protein, etc. the point is this: If that’s all it takes to maintain 300 pounds, is it really fair, or just, or compassionate, or reasonable on any level at all, to consider me or other fat people as “asking for” the derision, judgment, and outright cruelty they weather?

That was the actual point of the thread.

So I started by saying: look, the counting calorie thing is even more brutal than it used to be, and this is disheartening.

Then someone brought up Taubes’ book, and Angel (who is evidently an actual angel!) sent me a copy, I opened it up an started reading… and yeah, the light dawned. Wow. I’m not imaging things!

Anyway, just wanted to get back to that. Because all this noise about how deluded I am because I think I can freakin’ relax and eat in a way that doesn’t leave me physically in pain, weak, and obsessed with food and actually reduce my weight seems to be coming from an assumption that I will, want to, or WAS stuffing my face with big piles of food to begin with and I’m somehow looking for an excuse to do that.

So, simplified:

[ul]
[li]Didn’t eat unreasonably to start. (But no one believed it)[/li][li]Stayed fat.[/li][li]Wanted to lose fat.[/li][li]Been beaten up about the calories for years, decided to measure carefully.[/li][li]Ate few calories.[/li][li]Stayed fat.[/li][li]Was very uncomfortable, too.[/li][li]Reported this to say: see. I ain’t eatin that much to be so fat anyway, now I’ve proved it.[/li][/ul]

Before anyone brings it up: Yes, I ate unreasonably as a child and a young woman, I have never remotely denied that. And I can certainly still overeat occasionally. But when I was STUFFING MY FACE day after day after day, so much that I was ill (I was unhappy, it was a drug, duh) …my weight was 180 to 220. (ages 12-37) NOW that I am NOT stuffing my face and haven’t for years, not even CLOSE, my weight has fluctuated between 275 and 340. Imagine my frustration.

So Taubes’ book explains THAT, as well, because it explains how my body is making me fat, not my behavior. My behavior may have started the job, but my body has continued it on its own.

[Stoid]

Oh, and a reason this thread and conversation should keep going is because there are a lot of people reading it and I hope this message is also coming through: it’s not only about weight. Taubes’ book goes into great detail about carb-restriction’s effect on HDL and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and diabetes.

So, as cute as Dr. Oz is (Taubes was on a few days ago, by the way, the video is on Oz’s site. Taubes was billed as the man who disagrees with everything Oz says…and Oz was a little freaked, seeing as how he’s a cardiac surgeon who would like to see us all eating tofu. But I give him credit for giving Taubes the forum and not shutting him down, and actually recommending his book.) his idea of “heart healthy” might be downright deadly.

Because I think Dopers are savvy enough to realize that one way or another, our Western diet is managing to kill even the lean among us via heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, so it behooves all of us to take a hard look at what we’re eating, and monitor our body chemistry to make sure we’re not headed for something unpleasant. And I believe that carb-restriction to one degree or another is the answer. For many people it would be enough to simply eat low on the glycemic index. For others, it might be more severe.

And nothing is genuinely “easy” like eating whatever the fuck you want in whatever quantity you want is “easy”, so any and all attempts to restrict anything is going to be a challenge. But some challenges are much larger than others.

For me, restricting overall calories, fat, and salt is far more miserable than restricting carbs, and I still haven’t determined to what extent I will have to do so to lose effectively.

Wanna know the hardest things for me? My morning coffee, and fruit. If it turns out that those things prevent me from losing or getting healthier, that will be very, very, very difficult. Because those things are part of my diet every single day and I look forward to them. (Also, hardcore carb restriction makes your mouth taste like shit, and that’s tough as well- makes me crave fruit). I drink one large coffee every morning that is really a homemade latte, half milk (now I’m switching to half-n-half, 1 carb) and then a big dollop of a flavored creamer. Since I HATE artificial sweeteners… I dunno. We’ll see.

And I like to end my day with a couple of oranges, or a grapefruit, or a hunk of pineapple, or a couple of kiwi, or an apple… we’ll see how it goes.

[Stoid]

@jsgoddess

Yes. It’s about calories. Some, not all, people who reduce their carbohydrate intake find that they are less hungry, more easily satisfied, and tend to have fewer cravings. It’s all still about being able to eat less.

No, actually, it’s not.

Read the book: Taubes explains that fat people overeat because they are fat. They are not fat because they overeat.

[pohjonen]

I usually avoid threads like this but I have a proposal for the “calories in/out” people. Try it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on morning one. Eat 3000 calories a day composed primarily of fat and protein. Keep the carbs below 20 and do it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on day eleven. Report back and tell us what happened. By your reasoning you should gain or at least stay the same. Are you willing to put your opinions to the test?

[Sarahfeena]

@Stoid

No, actually, it’s not.

Read the book: Taubes explains that fat people overeat because they are fat. They are not fat because they overeat.

Did they start out fat? I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m trying to understand, and this thread is kind of convoluted. Taking this statement at face value, the factor you left out is how the person got fat to begin with. At some point in time, there must have been some overeating, or am I missing something here?

[MsWhatsit]

Well, since Stoid can’t/won’t answer the question, maybe someone else who has read Taubes’ book could say whether it relies on peer-reviewed science or not.

Pohjohnen, your experiment sounds interesting but you’d need to control for activity level. To use an extreme example, an Olympic-level swimmer needs a lot more than 3,000 calories per day to maintain bodyweight; a moderately sedentary mom of 3 like yours truly does not.

[Stoid]

For those who think I’m misunderstanding the book, and calories are what it’s all about, and low-carb is just a sneaky way to make low-calorie eating easier, and because we are eating fewer calories we lose fat..NO:

Pg 8:

I will argue in this book that the fault lies entirely within the medical orthodoxy, both the belief that excess fat is caused by consuming excess calories, and teh advice that stems from it. **I’m going to argue that this calories in/calories out paradigm of adiposity is nonsensical: that we dont’ get far because we eat too much and move too little, and that we can’t solve the problem or prevent it by consciously doing the opposite. ** This is the original sin, so to speak, and we’re never going to solve our own weight problems, let alone the societal problems of obesity and diabetes and teh disaease that accompany them until we understand this and correct it.

Page 10:

First, when insulin levels are elevated, we accumulate fat in our fat tissue; when these levels fall, we liberate fat from teh fat tissue and burn it for fuel. This has been known since the 1960s and has never been controversial. Second, our insulin levels are effectiely determined by the carbohydrates we eat. Not entirely, but for all intents and purposes. The more carboydrates we eat, and the easier they are to digest, and the sweeter they are, teh more insulin we will ultimate secrete, meaning that the level of it in our bloodstream is greater and so is the fat we retain in our fat cells. “Carbohydrate is driving insulin is driving fat” is how George Cahill, a former professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, recently described this to me. Cahill had done some of the early research ont eh regulation of fat accumulation in the 1950s, and then he coedited an 800 page American Physiological Society compendium of this research that was published in 1965.

In other words, the science itself makes clear that hormones, enzymes, and growth factors regulate our fat tissue, jsut as they do everything else in the human body, and that we do not get fat because we overeat, we get fat because the carbohydrates in in our diet make us fat. The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one- specifically, the stimulation of insulin secretion caused by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods…these carbohydrates literally make us fat, and by driving us to accumulate fat, they make us hungrier and make us sedentary.

Note the order there: drive us to be fat FIRST, THEREFORE we are hungrier and sedentary.

[Stoid]

@Sarahfeena

At some point in time, there must have been some overeating, or am I missing something here?

Yes, your’e missing something.

Read my previous post.

Yes, fat people eat more… but no, that’s not why they are fat!!!

Yeesh.

If you want to genuinely understand what his point is,

Read.
The.
Book.

I read it in two days. It’s not tough going.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

“Hormonal imbalance.” Hilarious. This guy Taubes must be laughing his ass off as the fatties lap this stuff up.

[pohjonen]

@MsWhatsit

Well, since Stoid can’t/won’t answer the question, maybe someone else who has read Taubes’ book could say whether it relies on peer-reviewed science or not.

Pohjohnen, your experiment sounds interesting but you’d need to control for activity level. To use an extreme example, an Olympic-level swimmer needs a lot more than 3,000 calories per day to maintain bodyweight; a moderately sedentary mom of 3 like yours truly does not.

That’s easy. Remain sedentary.

[Stoid]

@MsWhatsit

Well, since Stoid can’t/won’t answer the question, maybe someone else who has read Taubes’ book could say whether it relies on peer-reviewed science or not.

American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition* British Journal of Nutrition, Netherlands Journal of Medicine, International Journal of Obesity, Endocrinology, An integrated Approach, Journal of The American Medical Association, Annals of internal Medicine* etc, etc, etc.

For twenty pages, average of 12 cites per page.

[Stoid]

Quote:
**Originally Posted by StarvingButStrong
**Umm. People, why are you arguing with Stoid about this? She has found a diet that she believes will suit her tastes/satisfy her hunger and let her lose weight. Why are you trying to talk her out of it?

[QUOTE=Zyada]
Because they have to prove that it is just about eating less and exercising more. Because that will mean they are right, and therefore if she succeeds, they get to claim that it was their advice that spurred her to lose weight, and if she fails then obviously it’s because she didn’t work hard enough. And then they can continue to justify their bias against overweight people as coming from a morally and medically superior position, rather than coming from thinking that fat people are ugly.
[/QUOTE]

Allow me to give you Exhibit A:

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

“Hormonal imbalance.” Hilarious. This guy Taubes must be laughing his ass off as the fatties lap this stuff up.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Big fat fake

For the record, Staubes is a journalist with no medical or scientific credentials.

[Meyer6]

@Stoid

American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition* British Journal of Nutrition, Netherlands Journal of Medicine, International Journal of Obesity, Endocrinology, An integrated Approach, Journal of The American Medical Association, Annals of internal Medicine* etc, etc, etc.

For twenty pages, average of 12 cites per page.

That’s him *reading *peer-reviewed papers and interpreting them himself. Has he written any peer-reviewed papers where his own thoughts are critiqued by those in the know?

[Ludovic]

@pohjonen

I usually avoid threads like this but I have a proposal for the “calories in/out” people. Try it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on morning one. Eat 3000 calories a day composed primarily of fat and protein. Keep the carbs below 20 and do it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on day eleven. Report back and tell us what happened. By your reasoning you should gain or at least stay the same. Are you willing to put your opinions to the test?

Just 10 days with at maximum of 10000 calories difference from a normal diet shouldn’t be differentiable from changes in water weight, digestive speed, and measurement error, especially when a change in diet is added into the mix on the first two.

[DrDeth]

@pohjonen

I usually avoid threads like this but I have a proposal for the “calories in/out” people. Try it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on morning one. Eat 3000 calories a day composed primarily of fat and protein. Keep the carbs below 20 and do it for 10 days. Weigh yourself on day eleven. Report back and tell us what happened. By your reasoning you should gain or at least stay the same. Are you willing to put your opinions to the test?

No doubt, calories do count, but Taubes is mostly right- counting calories is not nessesary. By and large Dr Oz and co are promoting outdated info. Low fat diets are not healthier than low carb diets. Low fat/low chol diets do not seem to significantly reduce chol, either. Meat is not bad for you- eaten in moderation.

I lost weight on a low carb/high protien diet, but I was doubtful of the whole “ketosis” thing, etc. But then I noticed- “junk food” is carb heavy and so are snacks. It’s actually hard to snack low carb. I ate less calories as I consumed hwaaaaayy less snacks (beef jerky, cheese sticks, some nuts).

As Pollan has said- the only BAD (normal) diet is the American Junk Food diet- full of HFCS, empty calories, bad fats and salt. Nothing wrong with a cheeseburger and fries- once in a while. But many dudes eat that crap every single fucking day, and snack on chips, cookies and candy in between. That is what will make you put on the pounds and eventually kill you.

Pollans “diet” of “1. Eat FOOD (he defines “food”, and a lot of what you find on the super-market shelf ain’t it), 2.Mostly veg, and 3. not too much*” is better than any “low fat” diet. That’s a good daily maintenence diet. But I admit, there’s no diet like the low-carb/high protien diet for painlessly taking off 20# or so pretty darn fast.

Note for those on the low-carb diet (and just about everyone else) get plenty of fiber! Get some of that powder stuff and have two large glasses of it per day. You should consume about 30+ grams of fiber a day, most Americans get less than half that. You can lose a few easy pounds by just steeping up your fiber intake. (Bowels move better, makes you feel “full”).
Do consult your MD before trying to lose a lot of weight fast!

**“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”, “avoid food products that contain more than 5 ingredients”, “avoid foods that contain HFCS”. *

[pohjonen]

Okay, I did some more research. A 5’3’’ woman aged 30 and weighing about 125 pounds should maintain weight (without exercise) on about 1800 calories per day. With a 1200 calories surplus for 10 days doing my experiment, she good gain about 3 pounds in 10 days, if the calories in/out theory is correct. Is anyone willing to try it?

[Sarahfeena]

@Stoid

Yes, your’e missing something.

Read my previous post.

Yes, fat people eat more… but no, that’s not why they are fat!!!

Yeesh.

If you want to genuinely understand what his point is,

Read.
The.
Book.

I read it in two days. It’s not tough going.

Oh my heavens. First, I’m sorry, I don’t have time to read the book right now, and it’s sorta irrelevant to my life, so I can’t make the time, either. Some day I will when I get a chance, though, so I can figure out if he’s really saying that yes, fat people eat more, but that’s not why they’re fat. Cause that’s kind of an extraordinary statement.

[pohjonen]

For those who say 10 days is not enough, do it for 30. That’s not too much to ask in the interest of science.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Stoid

Read the book: Taubes explains that fat people overeat because they are fat. They are not fat because they overeat.

Comedy. Fucking. Gold.

Does Taubes find some way to handwave away the explosion of obesity in the U.S. over the past couple of decades, or is he simply positing that more people magically become fat *now *(which forces them to shovel plates of **tasty baked goods **into their gaping maws)?